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Steve Backshall is well-known as a TV presenter, wildlife enthusiast and explorer. He travels the world to learn about the most inspiring animals, from boxing mantis shrimp to charging tigers. Steve also regularly writes articles for newspapers and magazines including the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER and BBC WILDLIFE and is an inspirational public speaker.Steve's website is www.stevebackshall.com, and you can follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/stevebackshallofficial and on Twitter @SteveJBackshall.

Helen Bailey was born and brought up in Northumberland, a county she always regarded as home.Barely into her teens, Helen invested her pocket money in buying a copy of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and spent the next few years sending short stories and poems to anyone she could think of. Much to her surprise, she sometimes found herself in print.After a degree in science, Helen worked in the media, running a successful London-based character licensing agency handling internationally renowned properties such as Snoopy, Felicity Wishes, Dilbert and Zorro.Helen died in 2016, leaving behind a significant body of work. She is best known for her Electra Brown series, of which the first is 'Life in the Shallow End'.

Grahame Baker Smith studied at Berkshire College of Art and Design and has had two picture books published: JO-JO'S JOURNEY in 1994 and THE VELVETEEN RABBIT in 1996. Since then, he has experimented with different styles of illustration and been commissioned for various adult books from The World of Angels to an HG Wells trilogy. He also does frequent illustration work for magazines and has set up his own card company, Shooting Stars, which he has run with his wife, Linda. They have three young children.

Laura grew up in Canada with a passion for stories. She followed this passion to attain an Honours BA in English and then moved abroad to Wales for an MA in Creative Writing and an adventure - and she never left! She now lives in a lovely coastal town in South Wales with her husband, son and big basset hound and has been writing and editing award-winning books for adults and children for the last ten years. She loves finding special stories to tell in the everyday, relatable world of a child (or dog).

Sonia is an Italian illustrator specializing in illustration for children. She lives in the north of Italy in a small town near Bergamo. She always loved to draw and this led her to attend a school in Florence where she studied illustration. Sonia has worked on a vast array of illustration projects: children's books, flap books, educational books, game books, toys, stickers and covers. She loves working on all sorts of different projects, her favourite things being drawing animals and using lots of colour!

Steve Skidmore writes with Steve Barlow. Together they are Britain's most popular comedy writing and performing double act for young people. Not surprisingly, they are known as The 2 Steves!The 2 Steves met over twenty years ago when they were both teaching in Nottingham. Since then they have written over 160 books together. They have also acted as series editors on numerous reading programmes for several major publishing houses.The 2 Steves are in great demand for author visits to schools, colleges and libraries across the world. They also undertake INSET events and make regular appearances at Literary Festivals.Steve Skidmore is shorter than Steve Barlow and less hairy. He was born in Birstall near Leicester in England. After managing to pass some exams at school, he went on to Nottingham University to supposedly read English, but spent most of his time playing sport and doing a variety of summer jobs including counting pastry pie lids (yes, really). He trained as a teacher of Drama, English and Film studies, before teaming up with Steve Barlow to become a full time author.He lives in Leicester and is a great rugby fan (he supports Leicester Tigers - "Come on you Tiiiiigeeeers!").

Brigette Barrager is a New York Times bestselling artist, designer, illustrator and children's book author. She attended the California Institute of the Arts for Character Animation before working at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Brigette has illustrated several books for children, including Uni the Unicorn and Florabelle. She lives in Los Angeles with her handsome husband, cute doggy and terrible cat.

Angela Barrett completed a Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art, London and was taught by Quentin Blake. Upon leaving, Angela turned almost immediately to illustration as a career.Her first book was The King, The Cat and The Fiddle, for A&C Black, which was runner up in the Mother Goose Award in 1984. Since then, Angela has illustrated titles and designed book covers for well over 30 titles. Recognition of her work came with the Smarties Prize in 1988 for Can It Be True?, the WH Smith Illustration Award in 1991 for The Hidden House and being shortlisted for the Kurt Maschler Award in 1984 and 1989 and the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1993 for Beware, Beware!The Orchard Book of Stories from the Ballet and The Orchard Book of Shakespeare Stories are exquisitely illustrated by Angela and are regarded as definitive collections. Angela has become a leading figure in illustration and her unique talent is recognised internationally. Her artwork regularly features in exhibitions and is highly collectable. Angela lives in London.

David has been a shelf-stacker, a library assistant, a call-centre worker, a civil servant and a printer, so obviously it was only a matter of time before he tried his hand at writing and illustrating children's books. He joined the world-renowned Children's Book Illustration MA at Anglia Ruskin CSA. It turns out he actually found it a lot harder than all of the above, but ultimately a lot more rewarding.Whilst on the course, David created his first picture book, Have you seen Elephant? which was published in 2015. He won the Sebastian Walker award for new talent in children's book illustration at his degree show and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.David's next book Fergus Barnaby Goes On Holiday was released in June 2017 and he is now in the process of developing more picture books. He lives in Kettering with his toughest critics: partner Jo, son Teddy and cat Sofia.

Alison studied illustration at Anglia College of Art in Cambridge and began an M.A. At Kingston University. In 1993 she was shortlisted for the Macmillan Prize for Oliver's Vegetables. She lives in Bristol with her young son..

Zdenko Basic received a prize at the first Croatian Biennale of Illustration and also won the Best Young Artist in Croatia award. In addition to his books, Zdenko works as a costume designer, scenographer and graphic designer.

Susan Batori lives in Budapest, Hungary. She studied graphic design at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest. She worked as an art director at DDB Advertising Agency then she noticed that drawing hilarious characters was much more fun. Since 2012, Susan has been working as a freelance children's book illustrator. Humour is the one thing in her studio that she could not live without.

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) was best known for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels, numbering fourteen books in total. He also wrote many novels, short stories and poems. The 1939 adaptation of Baum's first Oz book has become one of the best loved films in cinema history. L. Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, New York, and died in Hollywood, California.

Martyn Beardsley lives just outside Nottingham. As well as writing children's books, he loves reading and writing about history, almost any period. He gets many of his ideas for stories when he's taking his mad dog for a walk early in the morning. Martyn has written over fifteen books: Five Naughty Kittens and The Dog that went Woof, the Sir Gadabout stories, a couple of ghost stories and some history books for children. For adults, he has written one historical biography, a book about England's last duel, and edited the diary of an eighteenth century surgeon-apothecary.

Ian Beck is a popular illustrator of children's books and his work appears frequently in magazines and advertisements. He has designed the jackets of many adult novels including all the Penguin editions of David Lodge and the Alice Thomas Ellis books.Ian's first book for Orchard was Five Little Ducks, which was so successful that a 'Big Book' format was published. The Ugly Duckling and The Orchard Book of Fairy Tales followed and Ian also contributed illustration to The Orchard Book of Opera Stories. Ian has also illustrated The Orchard ABC and Little Angel written by Geraldine McCaughrean.Ian Beck lives in Richmond, Surrey with his wife and three children and keeps in close touch with children through frequent visits to schools and libraries.

David is the author of over 60 children's books for all preschool and primary ages. David's books include best-selling picture books such as 'Big Bear Little Bear' and 'The Dinosaur Games', and 'The Team' football fiction series.Babies Don't Bite is his first book for Hodder.David was born in Devon, grew up in Warrington, and settled in Norfolk, where he lives by the sea with his family. David had an early successful career as a genetic engineer making newfangled antibiotics, before retiring from science at the very early age of 27! He now spends a lot of his time swimming in the sea, doing Tai Chi, cooking for his increasingly demanding family, visiting schools, libraries and festivals - and writing.

Over The Moon is run by husband and wife team Andrew and Karen Bendy. They have been going for 3 years in the wholesale market, but started 5 years ago with hand-made stationery. Prior to Over The Moon, Karen worked for 12 years in a design role for an Advertising Agency and also as a freelance artist. She has also done book illustration and textile design. When Karen is not busy at work, she is running a busy house full of children, growing vegetables, delivering people to ballet lessons, flute lessons, football practise, pony riding...

A H Benjamin is an established children's author with 30 titles to his credit. His books have sold worldwide with more than 20 translations, including Chinese, Korean, Turkish and Arabic. Some of his work has been adapted for radio, television and theatre.He's married with four grown up children and four young grandchildren who have all been his inspiration for writing. He lives in Lincolnshire with wife, Trisha. His hobbies are reading, WRITING, walking and playing the playstation 2 (but only football!).When he was a little boy he dreamt of being a cowboy... He still does!

Peter studied languages at Oxford and has two young children. He is the author of the bestselling Lark in the Ark (shortlisted for Red House Book Award) and the hilarious The Great Bottom Swap (rated 5 stars on Mumsnet). He recently won the American Library Association Notable Book of the year with King Jack and the Dragon and in 2011 he won the Roald Dahl Funny Prize with Cats Ahoy!